Few issues ignite such passion among the base of both parties. Democrats argue that the laws are intended to keep poor voters away from the polls because they often have difficulty obtaining identification. Republicans contend cheating is rife in today’s elections.

Which is a classic “he said, she said” observation. I thought we were past this point already, but I guess not. Evidently, Jeremy Peters and his editors at the Times think the practice is still acceptable. I don’t, and I think a lot of Times readers don’t.

Thus:

"There's a factual dispute and we have no idea who's right" journalism will eventually be seen as low quality news. http://t.co/my6fZJKmgw

I’m going to write about this “Democrats argue/Republicans contend” paragraph at my flagship site, PressThink. This notebook post is just a stub. (“In Wikipedia, a stub is a short article in need of expansion.”) The glaring lameness of “he said, she said” is not a new subject for me. I’ve been writing about it for five years. So I’m looking for new ways to get the point across. If you have comments and links that should be included in my fuller post, you may share them here.